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Sensex recovers

After Wednesday's sharp fall, speculatives recovered marginally and moved the Bombay Stock Exchange sensex up by 12.21 points following renewed buying support from foreign institutional investors and local institutions at select counters.

Morgan Stanley sold 500,000 of ITC shares and other FIIs bought sizeable amount of this equity. On the other hand, domestic institutions, including Unit Trust of India and Life Insurance Corporation of India, continued their support to the capital market.

The market opened with selling pressure from all corners, following the uncertain political situation at Centre. Bear operators spread a rumour that Congress had withdrawn support to the United Front government. This demoralised the sentiments of investors. After the mid-trading , FIIs coupled with local institutions purchased considerable amount of blue chips at the lower level, which shot the sensex up over the 3,500 mark by the fag end of the day.

Leading brokers said investors were extremely cautious to put their money in the market. Stability in the foreign exchange market, however, changed the FIIs mood.

Mirroring the uptrend, the BSE sensitive index (30 scrips), though it opened lower at 3,394.27 points, on renewed buying support went up to 3504.41 points before closing at 3,466.86 points, showing a net gain of 12.21 points as against its previous close of 3,454.65 points.

The broadbased BSE national index (100 scrips) recovered and crossed the 1,500 mark again. It closed at 1,503.07 points against Wednesday's 1497.97 points, thus gaining 05.10 points.

The BSE-200 and dollex indices finished at 339.59 and 151.17 points as compared to the last trading day's close of 338.21 and 150.44 points respectively.

The total turnover on screen-based trading shot up to Rs 10.47 billion over the previous turnover of Rs 8.68 billion. The maximum active users were 1,702.

ITC led the volume of business by registering the highest turnover of Rs 5.60 billion. It was followed by Reliance (Rs 840.2 million), Tata Tea (Rs 820.9 million), SBI (Rs 656 million) and Tisco (Rs 118.2 million).

The other scrips which saw good business were of Castrol India (Rs 474.1 million), BHEL (Rs 235.5 million), MTNL (Rs 194.5 million), Hind Lever (Rs 173.9 million), Telco (Rs 137.9 million), ACC (Rs 116.1 million), Mahindra and Mahindra (Rs 77.3 million), IPCL (Rs 76.2 million), ICICI (Rs 66.5 million) and Hindalco (Rs 52 million).

The other counters which registered good transactions were Infosys Tech, Videsh Sanchar, Aptech Limited, Satyam Comp, Lakshmi Mach, NIIT, ICI India, TVS Suzuki, Cipla Limited, Nicholar Pir, Software Sol, Reliance Pet, Cochin Refin, LML Limited and Wipro at 'B1' counters.

UNI

UNI